Love, love, love Solomon's Seal. I have a small colony of the short varigated in a deep shade bed on the back rear corner of my house. Didn't know about the tall native but I will before the week's out! (ha, google is my bf) Tnanks, Kathy for sharing that bit of info. toomuchglass, here's a no-fail formula for you... Rich moist shaded soil + *toomuch* creativity/imagination = a lil slice of paradise, Garnish as desired with pieces from your gallery...then invite me to tea in your garden so I can relax and admire all your lovely pieces at leisure =] Once I realized my Solomn's Seal was thriving, I added a couple hostas, snagged a cutting from a vinca vine from under the shade tree & plopped in some dead nettle for ground cover. Oh...and last year I added an autumn fern (?) which has tripled in size. Color me flabbergasted but it's all thriving and lovely. And trust me when I say, if *I* can do this, anyone can. Ha, if I only had an OUNCE of your creativity! Yup... thIS is a challenge *grin*. And I'm expecting to see victory photos in a few weeks. I trust I won't be disappointed. blessings, ~digger

My Walmart has been accommodating when I bring my bags, and most cashiers are very willing to put as much stuff in as few bags as possible. They are even selling reusable bags as well. If you have a Trader Joe's around you, they have a raffle if you buy one of their reusable bags, or bring bags to reuse. I'm not sure how long it will last, but you get a ticket, and a chance to win another reuseable bag with $25 worth of groceries inside it! Pretty cool idea. I get a $0.02 discount per bag I use at my local store. Dee, I had to laugh about your story about your husband wanting bags...my mom called me one day all excited..."you won't believe what I've done...I bought those reuseable bags at the grocery store, and I love them", then at Christmas she and my aunt kept telling me the "green things" they had done this holiday season. I was very proud of them, but the best was the baffled look on my cousins faces, like why are they telling you that! (I'm active in my church's global warming group, which my mom and aunt are always hearing about)

I am about three miles from the Mexican border so that is about as southern New Mexico as you can get. My acre and a half space is also an NWF refuge, so I welcome all rabbits, and ground squirrels and birds and the rest. The road runners are startling, the quail wonderful to watch (how could anyone shoot out a friend's face pursuing these fist sized birds with a high powered shotgun as their families and babies run by in single file? What's left after you shoot them? How's that for family values? Don't get me started!) so all living things are welcome here (I'd like to get a few chickens in to go on scorpion patrol someday!) I am planning along an eastern facing wall some rosemary plantings, with perhaps a few roses, and wondering what would make it. I hope mainly to get natives in, like mesquite and cacti and ocotillo and agave, etc. There's room enough here, and I've only been in a few months now. Still unpacking boxes. I immediately pulled down a decorative block wall and reset it at the front and center for a meditation garden, and pulled down an old improvised BBQ pit in the back to build a walkway there, to my main bird (and varmint) feeding area. Plenty of those white wing doves around here, whose scientific name ends with asiatica, the only non native species welcome here. I see hummers and woodpeckers buzzing around, but have not yet set up there stations. Have the butterfly puddle going with a slow drip system; the quail families like it too. I set up some small bird feeders (long feeders for small birds) that the dove never bothered in my last place, but these out here, normally ground feeders, have figured out how to hang on and pull out some feed, very strange. Like Flying squirrels in their tenacity! I appreciate deertlvr's advice on local sources, and will go check them out after payday. ALso their advice on transplanting barrel cactus and agave from the leach field as the state inspector advised. Someday I hope to set up the heat resistant strain of tomato as well as squash, bean, etc. Mostly a got a great crop of tumbleweed. I haven't seen any of those goathead making weeds, thank goodness. I hate tracking those seeds into the house and "discovering" them later in the carpet while barefoot. Well, let me know how it goes and what I can do here, too, coming from zone 6. I admire desertlvr's advice about the fruit trees as well.

I've always called it a purse, but Grandma, born in Ohio, called it a pocketbook. Like cilantro's family, she also had a "coin purse" that she kept change in, it looked like a small bag with a metal clasp. She also had a "compact" for face powder. Mother had a purse and a wallet. The wallet had a small compartment for coins, slots for driver's license and credit card and a place for paper money as well as one for her check book. She had a matching "cigarette case" which held a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She did eventually quit smoking, and now a cell phone case has taken the place of the cigarettes. Now I have a purse and a wallet, much like Mother's, but mine has more spaces for the endless supply of today's cards, from insurance cards to Costco to the local gas station, AAA, AARP, the library. You name it, they got a card! cacaobird, I refuse to go out in public in my pajamas, although I live near a college town and it seems like 90% of the students go to morning classes in their pajamas. Since I live out in the country, though, I can walk out with a cup of coffee and curse the beavers in the pond without anyone else seeing me. I've never worn a house dress that I remember, and I'm 61. Annie